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Lecture by Chantal Mouffe, Globalization
and Cultural differentiation seminar.
March 19-20, 1999, MACBA'-CCCB
For a politics of democratic identity
In recent decades, the willingness to rely on categories like "human
nature", "universal reason" and "rational autonomous
subject" has increasingly been put into question. From diverse standpoints,
very different thinkers have criticized the idea of a universal human
nature, of a universal canon of rationality through which that nature
could be known, as well as the possibility of a universal truth. Such
a critique of rationalism and universalism, which is sometimes referred
to as "post-modern", is seen by authors like Jurgen Habermas
as a threat to the modern democratic ideal. They affirm that there is
a necessary link between the democratic project of the Enlightenment and
its epistemological approach and that, as a consequence, to find fault
with rationalism and universalism means undermining the very basis of
democracy. This explains the hostility of Habermas and his followers towards
the different forms of post-Marxism, post-structuralism and post-modernism.
I am going to take issue with such a thesis and argue that it is only
by drawing all the implications of the critique of essentialism
which constitutes the point of convergence of all the so-called "posties"
that it is possible to grasp the nature of the political and to
reformulate and radicalize the democratic project of the Enlightenment.
I believe that it is urgent to realize that the universalist and rationalist
framework in which that project was formulated has today become as obstacle
to an adequate understanding of the present stage of democratic politics.
Such a framework should be discarded and this can be done without having
to abandon the political aspect of the Enlightenment which is represented
by the democratic revolution.
We should, on this subject, follow the lead of Hans Blumenberg who in
his book, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, distinguishes two different
logics in the Enlightenment, one of "self-assertion" (political)
and one of "self-grounding" (epistemological). According to
him, those two logics have been articulated historically but there is
no necessary relation between them and they can perfectly be separated.
It is therefore possible to discriminate between what is truly modern
the idea of "self-assertion" and what is merely
a "reoccupation" of a medieval position, i.e. an attempt to
give a modern answer to a premodern question. In Blumenbergs view,
rationalism is not something essential to the idea of self-assertion but
a residue from the absolutist medieval problematic. This illusion of providing
itself with its own foundations which accompanied the labour of liberation
from theology should now be abandoned and modern reason should acknowledge
its limits. Indeed, it is only when it comes to term with pluralism and
accepts the impossibility of total control and final harmony that modern
reason frees itself from its premodern heritage.
This approach reveals the inadequacy of the term "post-modernity"
when it is used to refer to a completely different historical period that
would signify a break with modernity. When we realize that rationalism
and abstract universalism, far from being constitutive of modern reason
were in fact reoccuptions of premodern position, it becomes clear that
to put them into question does not imply a rejection of modernity but
a coming to terms with the potentialities that were inscribed in it since
the beginning. It also help us to understand why the critique of the epistemological
aspect of the Enlightenment does not put its political aspect of self-assertion
into question but, on the contrary, can help to strengthen the democratic
project.
The critique of essentialism.
One of the fundamental advance of what I have called the critique of essentialism
has been the break with the category of the subject as a rational transparent
entity which could convey a homogeneous meaning on the total field of
her conduct by being the source of her actions. Psychoanalysis has shown
that, far from being organized around the transparency of an ego, personality
is structured in a number of levels which lie outside the consciousness
and rationality of the agents. It has therefore discredited the idea of
the necessarily unified character of the subject. Freuds central
claim is that the human mind is necessarily subject to division between
two systems, one of which is not and cannot be conscious. The self-mastery
of the subject, a central theme of modern philosophy, is precisely what
he argues can never be reached. Following Freud and expanding his insight,
Lacan has shown the plurality of registers the Symbolic, the Real
and the Imaginary that penetrate any identity, and the place of
the subject as the place of the lack which, though represented within
the structure, is the empty place that at the same time subverts and is
the condition of the constitution of any identity. The history of the
subject is the history of her identifications and there is no concealed
identity to be rescued beyond the latter. There is thus a double movement.
On the one hand, a movement of decentering which prevents the fixation
of a set of positions around a preconstituted point. On the other hand,
and as a result of this essential non-fixity, the opposite movement: the
institution of nodal points, partial fixations which limit the flux of
the signified under the signifier. But the dialectics of non-fixity/fixation
is possible only because fixity is not pregiven, because no center of
subjectivity precedes the subjects identifications.
I think that it is important to stress that such a critique of essential
identities is not limited to a certain current in French theory but is
found in the most important philosophies of the twentieth century. For
instance, in the philosophy of language of the later Wittgenstein, we
also find a critique of the rationalist conception of the subject that
indicates that the latter cannot be the source of linguistic meanings
since it is through participation in different languages games that the
world is disclosed to us. We encounter the same idea in Gadamers
philosophical hermeneutics in the thesis that there exists a fundamental
unity between thought, language and the world, and that it is within language
that the horizon of our present is constituted. A similar critique of
the centrality of the subject in modern metaphysics and of its unitary
character can be found in different forms in several other authors and
this allow us to affirm that, far from being limited to post-structuralism
or post-modernism, the critique of essentialism constitutes the point
of convergence of the most important contemporary philosophical currents.
Anti-essentialism and politics
In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy we have attempted to draw the
consequences of this critique of essentialism for a radical conception
of democracy by articulating some of its insights with the gramscian conception
of hegemony. This led us to put the question of power and antagonism and
their ineradicable character at the center of our approach. One of the
main thesis of the book is that social objectivity is constituted through
acts of power. This means that any social objectivity is ultimately political
and that it has to show the traces of exclusion which governs its constitution:
what following Derrida, we have called its "constitutive outside".
But, if an object has inscribed in its very being something other than
itself: if as a result, everything is constructed as difference, its being
cannot be conceived as pure "presence" or "objectivity".
This indicates that the logics of the constitution of the social is incompatible
with the objectivism and essentialism dominant in social sciences and
liberal thought.
The point of convergence -or rather mutual collapse- between objectivity
and power is what we have called "hegemony". This way of posing
the problem indicates that power should not be conceived as an external
relation taking place between two pre-constituted identities, but rather
as constituting the identities themselves. This is really decisive. Because
if the "constitutive outside" is present within the inside as
its always real possibility, in that case the inside itself becomes a
purely contingent and reversible arrangement (in other words, the hegemonic
arrangement cannot claim any other source of validity than the power basis
on which it is grounded). The structure of mere possibility of any objective
order, which is revealed by its mere hegemonic nature is shown in the
forms assumed by the subversion of the sign (i.e. of the relation signifier/signified).
For instance, the signifier "democracy" is very different when
fixed to a certain signified in a discourse that articulates it to "anti-communism"
and when it is fixed to another signified in a discourse that makes it
part of the total meaning of antifascism. As there is no common ground
between those conflicting articulations, there is no way of subsuming
them under a deeper objectivity which would reveal its true and deeper
essence. This explains the constitutive and irreducible character of antagonism.
The consequences of those thesis for politics are far-reaching. For instance,
according to such a perspective, political practice in a democratic society
does not consist in defending the rights of preconstituted identities,
but rather in constituting those identities themselves in a precarious
and always vulnerable terrain. Such an approach also involves a displacement
of the traditional relations between "democracy" and "power".
For a traditional socialist conception, the more democratic a society
is, the less power would be constitutive of social relations. But if we
accept that relations of power are constitutive of the social, then the
main question of democratic politics is not how to eliminate power but
how to constitute forms of power that are compatible with democratic values.
To acknowledge the existence of relations of power and the need to transform
them while renouncing the illusion that we could free ourselves completely
from power, this is what is specifics to the project of "radical
and plural democracy" that we are advocating.
Another distinct character of our approach concerns the question of the
de-universalization of political subjects. We try to break with all forms
of essentialism. Not only the essentialism which penetrates to a large
extent the basic categories of modern sociology and liberal thought and
according to which every social identity is perfectly defined in the historical
process of the unfolding of being; but also with its diametrical opposite:
a certain type of extreme post-modern fragmentation of the social which
refuses to give the fragments any kind of relational identity. Such a
view leaves us with a multiplicity of identities without any common denominator
and makes it impossible to distinguish between differences that exist
but should not exist and differences that do not exist but should exist.
In other words, by putting an exclusive emphasis on heterogeneity and
incommensurability, it impedes us to recognize how certain differences
are constructed as relations of subordination and should therefore be
challenged by a radical democratic politics.
Democracy and Identity
After having given a brief outline of the main tenets
of our anti-essentialist approach and of its general implications for
politics, I now would like to address some specific problems concerning
the construction of democratic identities. I am going to examine how such
a question can be formulated within the framework which breaks with the
traditional rationalist liberal problematic and that incorporates some
crucial insights of the critique of essentialism. One of the main problem
with the liberal framework is that it reduces politics to the calcul of
interests. Individuals are presented as rational actors moved by the search
for the maximization of their self-interest. That is, they are seen as
acting in the field of politics in a basically instrumentalist way. Politics
is conceived through a model elaborated to study economics, as a market
concerned with the allocation of resources, where compromises are reached
among interests defined independently of their political articulation.
Other liberals, those who rebel against this model and who want to create
a link between politics and morality believe that it is possible to create
a rational and universal consensus by means of free discussion. They believe
that by relegating disruptive issues to the private sphere, a rational
agreement on principles should be enough to administer the pluralism of
modern societies. For both type of liberals, everything that has to do
with passions, with antagonisms, everything that can lead to violence
is seen as archaic and irrational: as residues of a bygone age where the
"sweet commerce" had not yet established the preeminence of
interest over passions.
But this attempt to annihilate the political is doomed to failure because
it cannot be domesticated in this way. As was pointed out by Carl Schmitt,
the political can derive its energy from the most diverse sources and
emerge out of many different social relations: religious, moral, economic,
ethnic or other. The political has to do with the dimension of antagonism
which is present in social relations, with the ever present possibility
of a "us" / "them" relation to be constructed in terms
of "friend" / "enemy". To deny this dimension of antagonism
does not make it disappear, it only leads to impotence in recognizing
its different manifestations and in dealing with them. This is why a democratic
approach needs to come to terms with the ineradicable character of antagonism.
One of its main task is to envisage how it is possible to defuse the tendencies
to exclusion which are present in all construction of collective identities.
To clarify the perspective that I am putting forward, I propose to distinguish
between "the political" and "politics". By "the
political", I refer to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent
in all human society, antagonism that, as I said, can take many different
forms and can emerge in diverse social relations. "Politics"
on the other side refers to the ensemble of practices, discourses and
institutions which seek to establish a certain order and to organize human
coexistence in conditions which are always potentially conflictual because
they are affected by the dimension of "the political". This
view which attempts to keep together the two meanings of "polemos"
and "polis" from where the idea of politics comes from is, I
believe, crucial if we want to be able to protect and consolidate democracy.
In examining this question the concept of the "constitutive outside"
to which I have referred earlier is particularly helpful. As elaborated
by Derrida, its aim is to highlight the fact that the creation of an identity
implies the establishment of a difference, difference which is often constructed
on the basis of a hierarchy: for example between form and matter, black
and white, man and woman, etc. Once we have understood that every identity
is relational and that the affirmation of a difference is a precondition
for the existence of any identity, i.e. the perception of something "other"
than it which will constitute its "exterior", then we can begin
to understand why such a relation may always become the breeding ground
for antagonism. Indeed, when it comes to the creation of a collective
identity, basically the creation of an "us" by the demarcation
of a "them", there is always the possibility of that "us"
and "them" relationship becoming one of "friend and enemy",
i.e. to become antagonistic. This happens when the "other",
who up until now has been considered simply as different, starts to be
perceived as someone who puts in question our identity and threatens our
existence. From that moment on, any form of "us and them" relationship,
whether it be religious, ethnic, economic or other, becomes political.
It is only when we acknowledge this dimension of "the political"
and understand that "politics" consists in domesticating hostility
and in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human
relations, that we can pose the fundamental question for democratic politics.
This question, pace the rationalists, is not how to arrive at a rational
consensus reached without exclusion, or in other words it is not how to
establish an "us" which would not have a corresponding "them".
This is impossible because there cannot exist an "us" without
a "them". What is at stake is how to establish this "us"/"them"
discrimination in a way that is compatible with pluralist democracy.
In the realm of politics, this presupposes that the "other"
is no longer seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an "adversary",
i.e. somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose right
to defend those ideas we will not put into question. We could say that
the aim of democratic politics is transform an "antagonism"
into an "agonism". The prime task of democratic politics is
not to eliminate passions nor to relegate them to the private sphere in
order to render rational consensus possible, but to mobilize those passions
in a way that promotes democratic designs. Far from jeopardizing democracy,
agonistic confrontation is in fact its very condition of existence.
Modern democracys specificity lies in the recognition and legitimation
of conflict and the refusal to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian
order. Breaking with the symbolic representation of society as an organic
body which is characteristic of the holist mode of social organization
a democratic society makes room for the expression of conflicting
interests and values. For that reason pluralist democracy demands not
only consensus on a set of common political principles but also the presence
of dissent and institutions through which such divisions can be manifested.
This is why its survival depends on collective identities forming around
clearly differentiated positions, as well as on the possibility of choosing
between real alternatives. The blurring of political frontiers between
right and left, for instance, impedes the creation of democratic political
identities and fuel disenchantment with political participation. This
prepares the ground for various forms of populist politics articulated
around nationalist, religious or ethnic issues. When the agonistic dynamic
of the pluralist system is hindered because of a lack of democratic identities
which one could identify, there is a risk that this will multiply confrontations
over essentialist identities and non-negotiable moral values.
Once it is acknowledged that any identity is relational and defined in
terms of difference, how can we defuse the possibility of exclusion that
it entails? Here again the notion of the "constitutive outside"
can help us. By stressing the fact the outside is constitutive, it reveals
the impossibility of drawing an absolute distinction between interior
and exterior. The existence of the other becomes condition of possibility
of my identity since, without the other, I could not have an identity.
Therefore every identity is irremediably destabilized by its exterior
and the interior appears as something always contingent. This questions
every essentialist conception of identity and forecloses every attempt
to conclusively define identity or objectivity. Inasmuch as objectivity
always depends on an absent otherness, it is always necessarily echoed
and contaminated by this otherness. Identity cannot, therefore, belong
to one person alone, and no-one belongs to a single identity. We may go
further, and argue that not only there are no "natural" and
"original" identities, since every identity is the result of
a constituting process, but that this process itself must be seen as one
of permanent hybridization and nomadization. Identity is, in effect, the
result of a multitude of interactions which take place inside a space
the outlines of which are not clearly defined. Numerous feminist studies
or researches inspired by the "post-colonial" perspective have
shown that this process is always one of "overdetermination",
which establishes highly intricate links between the many forms of identity
and a complex network of differences. For an appropriate definition of
identity, we need to take into account both the multiplicity of discourses
and the power structure which affects it, as well as the complex dynamic
of complicity and resistance which underlines the practices in which this
identity is implicated. Instead of seeing the different forms of identity
as allegiances to a place or as a property, we ought to realize that they
are what is at stake in any power struggle.
What we commonly call "cultural identity" is both the scene
and the object of political struggles. The social existence of a group
needs such conflict. It is one of the principal areas in which hegemony
is exercised, because the definition of the cultural identity of a group,
by reference to a specific system of contingent and particular social
relations, plays a major role in the creation of "hegemonic nodal
points". These partially define the meaning of a "signifying
chain" allowing us to control the stream of signifiers, and temporarily
to control the discursive field.
Concerning the question of "national" identities so crucial
again today the perspective based on hegemony and articulation
allows us to come to grips with the idea of the national, to grasp the
importance of that type of identity, instead of rejecting it in the name
of anti-essentialism or as part of a defense of abstract universalism.
It is very dangerous to ignore the strong libidinal investment that can
be mobilized by the signifier "nation" and it is futile to hope
that all national identities could be replaced by so-called "post-conventional"
identities. The struggle against the exclusive type of ethnic nationalism
can only be carried out by articulating another type of nationalism, a
"civic" nationalism expressing allegiance to the values specific
of the democratic tradition and the forms of life that are constitutive
of it.
Contrary to what is sometimes asserted, I do not believe that to
take the case of Europe, for instance the solution is the creation
of a "European" identity, conceived as a homogeneous identity
which could replace all other identifications and allegiances. But if
we envisage it in terms of "aporia", of a "double genitive"
as suggested by Derrida in The Other Heading, then the notion of
a European identity could be the catalyst for a promising process, not
unlike what Merleau-Ponty called "lateral universalism", which
implies that the universal lies at the very heart of specificities and
differences, and that it is inscribed in respect for diversity. Indeed,
if we conceive this European identity as a "difference to oneself",
then we are envisaging an identity which can accommodate otherness, which
demonstrates the porosity of its frontiers and opens up towards that exterior
which makes it possible. By accepting that only hybridity creates us as
separate entities, it affirms and upholds the nomadic character of every
identity.
I submit that, by resisting the ever present temptation to construct identity
in terms of exclusion, and by recognizing that identities comprise a multiplicity
of elements, and that they are dependent and interdependent, a democratic
politics informed by an anti-essentialist approach can defuse the potential
for violence that exists in every construction of collective identities
and create the conditions for a truly "agonistic" pluralism.
Such a pluralism is anchored in the recognition of the multiplicity within
oneself and of the contradictory positions that this multiplicity entails.
Its acceptance of the other does not merely consists in tolerating differences,
but in positively celebrating them because it acknowledges that, without
alterity and otherness, no identity could ever assert itself. It is also
a pluralism that valorizes diversity and dissensus, recognizing in them
the very condition of possibility of a striving democratic life.
Chantal Mouffe
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